


Baby, Fall

by sg_wonderland



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Episode Related, Episode: s07e17-18 Heroes, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-24
Updated: 2019-03-24
Packaged: 2019-11-29 10:55:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18222197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sg_wonderland/pseuds/sg_wonderland
Summary: He would always be there when Daniel needed him





	Baby, Fall

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve said before, and frankly it bears repeating, that the one thing I absolutely hated about Heroes was that no one-no one-even offered to comfort Daniel.  
> And I just love this song.

"Oh, look, there you go again  
Puttin' on that smile again  
Even though I know you've had a bad day  
Doin' this and doin' that  
Always puttin' yourself last  
A whole lotta give and not enough take  
But you can only be strong so long before you break

So fall  
Go on and fall apart  
Fall into these arms of mine  
I'll catch you   
Everytime you fall  
Go on and lose it all  
Every doubt, every fear,  
Every worry, every tear,  
I'm right here  
Baby, fall

Forget about the world tonight  
All that's wrong and all that's right  
Lay your head on my shoulder, and let it fade away  
And if you wanna let go, honey, its okay

Fall  
Go on and fall apart  
Fall into these arms of mine   
I'll catch you  
Everytime you fall  
Go on and lose it all  
Every doubt, every fear,  
Every worry, every tear,  
I'm right here  
Baby fall

Hold on, hold on,  
Hold on to me

Fall  
Go on and fall apart  
Fall into these arms of mine  
I'll catch you  
Everytime you fall  
Go on and lose it all  
Every doubt, every fear,  
Every worry, every tear,  
I'm right here  
Baby fall" - Clay Mills / Sonny Lemaire / Shane Minor

 

Daniel is truthful with everyone-with the exception of Daniel. I mean, he’s blistered me with the truth more times than my ass cares to admit. But, right here, right now, he’s lying his ass off. If I’ve heard ‘I’m fine, Jack’ once, I’ve heard it a million times.

He wouldn’t tell me, absolutely refused to tell me, exactly how Fraiser died. “Isn’t it enough that she’s dead?” He asked with icy fury. No, it isn’t. Not for me and damn sure not for Daniel. I requested a copy of his mission report and read it word for word. Read his bald, curt version of the loss of Janet Fraiser.

Carter and Teal’c had done their grieving together; between them, they wrote a damned fine eulogy. But the one person who hadn’t gotten a shoulder to cry on was the one person who needed it the worst. Carter said he’d brushed off both her and Teal’c and even the general admitted he’d gotten nowhere when he’d tried to talk to Daniel. By the time they’d sprung me from the infirmary, Daniel was well on his way to constructing the Great Wall of Denial.

 

*

I have every reason to believe he hasn’t cried, won’t let himself cry for a woman who was our unofficial fifth almost from the beginning. Good times and bad, and especially bad, Janet Fraiser was there with a sober ride home, as a mediator, a cool head in an argument or a crisis, a shoulder to cry on or a good ass kicking, as the case warranted.

I’ve already had my moment of truth, when I looked down at the stitches in my hand and realized although they were perfect and precise, another pair of hands had put me back together this time, that she would never do so again; I had to find a dark room with a strong lock and just let it go.

Let her go.

*

In the past two weeks, sex has been nonexistent between us. It’s not because I can’t, it’s because Daniel won’t. He still sees me as being fragile.

I’m not being arrogant but there were a couple of people whom Daniel tended to see as invincible. To have forced him to see both of those people broken in the worst possible way, i.e. him helpless to do anything, has, well, broken something in Daniel.

And I aim to fix that. In order to do that, however, I have to get Daniel to admit he’s broken. A Herculean task, to be sure, but he underestimates me quite often. I have more than a few tricks cultivated specifically for dealing with Dr. Daniel Jackson. 

 

*

Daniel won’t stay away for long; remember that fragile thing I mentioned? He’s my self-appointed guardian nurse so I know he will eventually land here at my house. 

Ruthlessly, I set the scene, which is another thing Daniel can’t resist. He likes to look at the whole picture, not just the artifact in the wall. He looks at the whole wall, the floor, the doors, anything that helps him figure out why and how. So I drink a couple of shots of whiskey, enough to show on my breath, then leave the open bottle on the coffee table.

I’m lying in bed wide awake when he finally stumbles home. I can picture his journey through the house. He carefully, quietly, closes and locks the door in case I’m asleep. He eases the hall closet open, hangs up his coat. His gimlet eyes have already picked out the whiskey bottle on the table by the lamp I left on for him; there’s no glass so he knows I’ve been swigging it straight from the bottle. He sits on the top step and unlaces his boots, leaving them so he can slide, sock-footed and noiseless, to the kitchen. There aren’t any dirty dishes in the sink so he knows I haven’t eaten anything, he gives a silent tsk at my self-neglect.

I keep my eyes closed as he creeps through the bedroom to the bathroom, going through the whole nightly ritual that has occasionally driven me nuts. He takes another shower-like he didn’t take one this morning-and neatly picks up the bathroom, which I intentionally left in uncommon disarray as further proof of my weakness. The clothes get sorted into the appropriate hamper, any dampness is wiped up, any surface that has shaving cream or toothpaste is ruthlessly cleaned and the room is left in a pristine state.

Now comes his quandary, does he slip in bed with me and risk waking me? Or does he go for the guest room, where he won’t be on hand if I need him?

“Daniel?” I whisper and he freezes. “S’alright, I wasn’t asleep.”

Decision made, he makes for his side of the bed, carefully folding his glasses into their case and sliding in. I roll over, into his comfort space. “Jack, maybe I should just sleep in the other room. Your ribs…”

“Are fine. I just…” My hand finds his unerringly in the dark and he curls his fingers around mine. “Just stay, okay?”

I feel his nod in the dark. “If you need me…”

“I do, Daniel, I do.” He lies beside me, stiff, clearly unable to relax. Oh, well, I suppose it’s up to me to start this off. “I had to go to the infirmary today, to get the stitches out, you know.”

He stiffens even more, although his “yeah?” is casual, as are the fingers that lightly trace the non-stitches on my hand.

“It’s just hard, you know.” I roll over so I can see him in the faint moonlight. “I keep expecting to see her there.”

His eyes slide away from mine. “Maybe you should just get some sleep, Jack. We can talk tomorrow.” In Daniel-speak, this means I will talk and he won’t.

“When...” This is very hard for me to say, but he deserves to know this. “When General Hammond told me about her, about Fraiser,” I feel him quiver beneath my hand, “my first thought was ‘Daniel’. I didn’t, it didn’t register what he was saying, and all I could think was that he said you were okay, that it...” my throat closes over. “That it wasn’t you.” The sob breaks out before he can choke it back; I tighten my arms around him, pulling him into me. “She was dead and part of me was thanking God it wasn’t you. How sick is that? I knew you were there together, knew you…it could just as easily have been you.”

He struggles against me, tries to crawl away, but I tighten my hold, press a kiss to the top of his hair. Another sob rips out of one of us, or maybe both of us. “Jack,” he finally gasps out.

“Shh, Daniel,” I whisper against his temple, stroking the long line of his back. “It’s okay, you need to let it go. She wouldn’t want you to do this to yourself, over her. If she were here, she’d be kicking your ass all over this bedroom.”

It starts out as a snort of laughter but his breath catches and he fights himself but finally gives up and turns his head into my chest and starts to cry in earnest. In true Daniel fashion, he goes all out when he cries, huge racking breaths and fists buried in my T-shirt. I pet him and stroke him and just be the place he needs to land. 

When he’s finally spent, when he’s finally laying on me, occasionally sniffling, I reach over and snag some tissues and hand them to him. “Come on, blow,” I encourage him, since crying always leaves him with a terribly stopped up head. He pulls away from me and stumbles toward the bathroom. I think about going after him, but I give him his privacy. While he’s gone, I make my way over to the bureau and exchange my sodden   
T-shirt for a clean one, leaving the other one lying on the floor before climbing back under the covers, patiently waiting for him to emerge.

He finally comes out, pads over and slides back beside me. I let him get comfortable before asking, “Did you take something for your head? You know how you get when you cry?”

“Yes, I did,” he huffs, still a bit breathless. “And if you know what crying does to me, why do you make me do it?”

I smile into the dark; my old Daniel is bouncing back, snipping and complaining. “Because you needed to, Daniel. Don’t I always know what’s best for you?”

A sure sign he isn’t quite up to par just yet, he merely sighs my name and rolls away from me, punching his pillow into submission before settling down. Without a trace of guilt, I grab him and roll him back into my arms.

This is one night I don’t think either of us needs to stay on our side of the bed.


End file.
